


Nostalgia

by jolymusichetta



Category: Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mentions of Sexting - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 01:31:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolymusichetta/pseuds/jolymusichetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cath is back for her sophomore year and maybe things would be smooth sailing this time around. She has her sister back, a great friend in her roommate and an amazing boyfriend. Plus, she's rereading Simon Snow and he always did wonders to make her feel more settled. Maybe, just maybe, she could skip all the drama that she reads in college AUs. Not that she really expected too. Still, it was nice to hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nostalgia

Dropping her tray down onto the table, Reagan rolled her eyes and Cath had to wonder what could have possibly bothered her irritable roommate now. “I hate freshmen,” she said, sitting down in her seat and letting something of a low growl resonate in her throat.

“You didn’t hate me,” Cath pointed out, taking a bite of her apple and leaning back in her chair, her feet up on the booth while Reagan did the same thing on the chair next to her.

“That’s different, you didn’t talk,” Reagan replied, rolling her eyes again as she speared a piece of lettuce with her fork and ate it, chewing as if it personally offended her. Cath didn’t bother asking what happened, she knew Reagan would start in on said freshman the second she finished chewing. “Like, what the hell. Did their mothers ever teach them this little thing called decency? Such as not hitting on other people’s boyfriends.”

A year ago, Cath simply would’ve brushed that off, dismissed it without a second thought, but she knew how Reagan felt now. She would’ve hated if someone hit on Levi. Probably wouldn’t have said anything about it like Reagan most likely did but still. She wouldn’t like it. “What did you say to them?”

“Told them to keep it in their pants and find someone who wouldn’t go to jail for statutory rape.”

“You do know that the age of consent is seventeen, right?” Cath asked expectantly. 

Reagan raised her eyebrows, looking at Cath as if she was silently asking _Am I an idiot?_ “I’m just hoping they won’t.” 

As Wren joined them, still carrying a bunch of books from her last class and balancing them on top of her tray, she slid in next to Reagan. It was sort of unsaid rule that during lunches, Levi got the seat next to Cath, and Wren got it during dinner. They had a system and it worked for them. “What happened today?”

“Freshman were hitting on her boyfriend,” Cath said, pointing her fork at Reagan as she went back to her drabble, a little piece of Simon Snow fiction she was working on, nothing compared to _Carry On, Simon_ , but still. It was nice to be writing something that didn’t directly relate to her life. 

Wren turned to Reagan, who had learned to tell them apart and even actually tolerate Wren. Tolerate was a relative term, because Wren talked more than Cath. “Third day back at school,” she said, shaking her head. “Which boyfriend.”

“Hey! We’ve been going steady all summer.”

“I didn’t know going steady was in your vocab, Reagan,” said a voice, Levi’s voice, and he kissed the back of Cath’s head, using it as an excuse to look over her shoulder, until she turned to swat at him. 

Reagan stuck her tongue out at him. Going steady must’ve been a good thing for her, because she loosened up a lot. Not quite as bitchy as the year before. “I was going to move my feet but then you said that and nope. Not going to.”

“That’s okay, I’ll just sit on Cather,” he said, reading over her shoulder again.

“No you won’t,” Cath said, eyes still trained on her computer, fingers clack-clack-clacking away at her keyboard rhythmically. She didn’t have to turn around to hear the frown in Levi’s voice when he asked, 

“Why not?” 

Instead, she stopped typing, saved her progress, a thousand words, and stood up, allowing Levi to take her seat before she sat down on him. “Because it makes much more sense for me to sit in your lap.”

“Ground rules from last year still stand, guys,” Reagan reminded them, sounding a little bored with this whole situation. 

Cath changed the topic quickly, before anybody could say anything further on the whole ground rules thing. “Jandro joining us?”

“He had to get to class,” Wren said with a shake of her head, but kept glancing at her phone, as if she was expecting an incoming text, which wouldn’t surprise anyone there. At all. 

“What about the unnamed boyfriend?” Levi asked with a playful waggle of his eyebrows, grin firmly in place as Cath continued typing. 

“Meeting up with some people to study,” Reagan replied with a shrug, taking another bite of her salad.

A comfortable silence fell over the table, Cath still typing, Wren texting, Reagan eating and Levi looking over Cath’s shoulder. He took a bite of her hardly touched apple and rested his chin on his shoulder.

Cath didn’t turn towards him, if only because his face would end up in extreme proximity to hers and she promised no gushy stuff. “You’re chewing in my ear.”

“I’m trying to read. Speaking of which, is this apple all you’ve had today? Because if it is, I’ll feel really bad for eating your lunch.”

Cath, pausing for a moment to reread what she had just written, waved a dismissive hand while she clicked through the things Word spellchecked for her. “Have it. I have several new boxes of protein bars waiting for me back in my dorm.”

Levi grinned while Reagan rolled her eyes. “Are you seriously going to revert back to the timid state I pulled you out of last year? Because you ate those things for a month in lieu of going to get real food.”

“I could’ve gone for longer if someone didn’t eat them all,” Cath shot back, elbowing Levi in the ribs before he pulled her closer against his chest. She could practically feel him grinning and it was infectious. She couldn’t help but smile when she was around him. Even Wren, who had gone through a sulky phase after she and Jandro had a pretty big fight last year, couldn’t resist laughing when Levi acted like an idiot, more than he usually did. Cath loved that he got along with her sister, and that he didn’t even think about comparing them. Wren was one way and Cath was another way and he just … preferred Cath’s ways. It had taken him a long time to convince her of that, but it happened, sometime between his sister’s wedding and Red Rose Day, a holiday in June where he gave her a red rose for every month he had loved her, five roses. Admittedly, her face turned about the same color as those roses and any doubt she had about Levi liking Wren better had dissipated. 

“Thank you, Levi, for eating them,” Reagan said, “It was the first step into getting her out into the brave, new world.”

“It was my pleasure,” Levi responded in that goofy way of his, the kind of way that made Cath want to kiss the smile off his bow lips but they were in public and even sitting on his lap in public was a step outside her comfort zone. But it was okay. They were her friends. They wouldn’t judge her. Hell, she was sure that Reagan had done a whole lot worse in public. He turned to Wren as Cath shook her head fondly and resumed typing, saving every few pages. “Wren? You’re awfully quiet over there.” He didn’t get a response. “Wren? Hello~?” He snapped his fingers a few times. It was normally Cath who got up in her head like that. Never Wren. 

When Wren looked up, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes widened. “Yeah?”

“You’re being quiet. Disturbingly so,” Reagan said, eyebrows raised expectantly. “What’s going on?”

Wren shook her head, quickly hitting the hold button on her phone and sending the screen to black before anybody could read it. Though the closest one to her was Reagan and she didn’t care enough to, they were all sure. “Nothing. Just texting Jandro.”

“Read it to us,” Levi said, flashing a toothy grin in her direction before biting off another piece of Cath’s apple. 

Wren snorted. “Not a chance.”

“Why not? We’re you sexting him?” he asked, turning the apple over in his hand, over and over and when he didn’t get a response, he looked up, eyes wide. “You were sexting him!” Even that got Cath’s attention, despite the fact that she really didn’t want it to. 

“Announce it to all of campus, why don’t you?!” Wren snapped before she regained her composure, “Besides, like you’ve never done it.” 

That was all Reagan was able to take. “Okay, this was a great conversation, but I’m leaving.” She stacked her plates on her tray and stood, getting rid of her things on the way out and tossing her hair over her shoulder.

Wren held up for a few minutes longer, refusing to look anywhere close to Levi, who was grinning like a madman and raising just one eyebrow at her. “Cath, your boyfriend is looking at me weird,” she whined.

“You can’t even see me!” Levi protested, smile quickly turning into a pout before it was a smile again. He didn’t like not smiling. It made him feel unhappy and if there was one thing Levi didn’t like being, it was unhappy. 

“I don’t have to, I can feel it.” 

Cath laughed, saving once more before she closed the lid on her laptop. “Oh, my god, do I have to separate you two?” 

“No. Because I’m leaving. I’ve got another class, anyway and I want to stop by my dorm,” Wren said, tossing her mostly uneaten food away before she walked out, carrying her books against her chest. As she left, Cath stood up to move and, after a moment of hugging her against his chest, Levi let her.

She picked up a fry from her tray and propped her head up on her chin. She didn’t know what to talk about and it probably showed, so Levi started the conversation: “Is this all you’ve eaten today?” He asked the same question again. Probably because he didn’t get the answer he expected the first time.

“I had omlettes with you this morning, remember? I slept over and made us breakfast?” 

“Yes, I do remember, thank you, but was this all you had for lunch?” Cath nodded. “You have to eat more than this.”

Oh, she wished he wasn’t going to do this: Start in on her eating habits. They were fine, she just got distracted today. “I was just writing all day. I’ve almost finished now. I’ll eat a lot at dinner,” she promised. It was nice, though, that she could write in public here. Everyone was typing on Word here, so no one would be particularly interested in what she was writing, which was good, because she didn’t feel like divulging, especially not to people who wouldn’t understand. At Levi’s insistence, she ate a few more fries before she shoved her tray towards him, lightly kicking her foot against his as she read over the syllabus she had gotten from her most recent class. This time around, she was smart enough not to sign up for anything that was earlier than nine am, because during summer, she had a habit of falling asleep around six am and she needed at least three hours to function properly. Otherwise, she was an unhelpful mess of Cath and it would take some time before she got back into a normal sleeping pattern. 

Levi finished off her food and Cath let him take a few of her books, the ones that wouldn’t fit into her backpack without crushing the most recent book she was reading, the first Simon Snow again. It felt right, to be rereading it around this time. It helped her through her first year of college and it had a nostalgic feel about it now. Not that it didn’t before. Slinging her backpack over her shoulders, Cath took Levi’s free hand and they started walking back to Pound Hall, fingers linked together. 

“So,” Levi began conversationally, eyes glinting in a way that made Cath wary of the conversation that was yet to come. “Why don’t you ever sext me?” He kissed her cheek after, to show that he had only been teasing as they passed through the shadows cast by the Love Library. It still didn’t stop Cath from punching his arm playfully. “What? I was kidding.” 

After glancing around to make sure that nobody was in sight, Cath pulled him closer to the library’s brick exterior and pressed him against the wall. Her books fell to the grass and lay there, forgotten, as he wound his arms around her waist, hidden away by shadows. “Why would I need to sext you when I see you every few hours?” she asked, eyebrows raised. Still, she checked over her shoulder. Writing about PDA was one thing, but actually showing PDA was another entirely and she wasn’t so sure it was something she was perfectly comfortable with yet. But Levi’s close proximity overruled that and his lips were everywhere, along with the smell of mint and Irish Springs soap, getting Cath practically drunk off his scent. 

She was late to her next class. Not that she minded.

**Author's Note:**

> I know I'm supposed to sound composed here, but it's seven am, I read Fangirl in one night and I wrote this in an hour and a half. This book ruined my life.


End file.
